The waterfall above shows water moving from one level of land to another, but the water is continuous – the same water. Some things are different about the Old and New Testaments, but salvation and grace are not part of those things. Salvation and Grace are a constant – a continuity. What does this have to do with baptism?
This week I will discuss the gracious, non-works based salvation of the Old Testament. Next week I will discuss the salvation of Gentiles in the Old Testament and the reason circumcision was only for Jews.
So let’s find out whether circumcision came from a works based religion. Without further ado, let’s back up to my late childhood:
One year when I was youngish, after my father pen-marked my height in the paint of a hall doorway, I remember having a child’s epiphany. I remember working over a specific deep though while I looked at the ink line on the jamb up close to my eyes. It wasn’t about ink or height; it was about Christians being the true Jews. I ran to tell my parents: Jesus was a Jew. God had “started” Christianity from the truest teacher of the Jews – Jesus. That meant that our religion, Christianity was the faithful continuation of God’s true religion. We had the true Judaism, and it was they who had rejected Jesus who had left.
I admit that I was under-informed at that age about the complexities of the situation.
Our commentary on Jonah is now available for pre-order through Athanasius Press. Rumors are that the printed books should be available on December 6th, and furthermore, that there is a 30% discount on all pre-orders. Oh, and if you would like to buy 25+copies of it for a book study or for your congregation, there is a 50% discount.
The Book of Jonah has captured the imagination of God’s people for centuries, and its unique context and content provide one of the richest stories of God’s mercy to the Gentiles through a reluctant prophet.
This commentary is not like the others. While many commentaries on Jonah focus on the disobedience and woes of the prophet–arguing for a sort of prophetic impiety– this work argues for an overarching narrative that sees God’s mercy transcending the reluctance of the prophet and opening the gates to a missiological reformation. Indeed Jonah is a lovely introduction to the Advent season as hope begins to permeate the Old Testament texts awaiting for a greater prophet than Jonah who will come and proclaim justice and righteousness to all the nations of the earth.
On a personal note, this would make a wonderful Christmas gift as a theological and devotional introduction to one of the most read books of the Scriptures. I’d be really honored if you would share the link with your friends and family.
Pastor Lusk and I are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to make this short but meaningful commentary available to the public.
“I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”-Jonah
In their commentary on the Book of Jonah, Uri Brito and Rich Lusk outline the ways in which the prophet to Nineveh embodies Israel’s disobedience to testify to the Gentile nations and how God’s lovingkindness exceeds that of His stiff-necked people.
Bible-reading is more of an art than a science. The Bible is a story, not a lexicon of systematic theological definitions. With this in mind, the Through New Eyes Bible Commentary Series builds on the foundational Biblical-theology work of James B. Jordan and other like-minded scholars in bringing you a set of commentaries that will help you read, teach and preach through the Bible while picking up on the rich symphonic themes and the literary symbolism of the Scriptures. Because they are written for thoughtful Christians without being overly academic, these commentaries will serve as valuable resources for family worship, Sunday school or Bible studies.
Philippe Petit walked across a wire strung between the Twin Towers in 1974. That is 1,312 feet in the air. He walked across it 8 times for a total of 45 minutes.
In the movie about it, The Walk, at the climax, Philippe is walking across the wire for the second time and he says, “And then I feel something that maybe I have never truly felt before. I feel thankful. So I get down on one knee and I salute. First, I salute the wire, then the towers, and then I salute the great city of New York.”
At the highest point in the movie, he offers thanks. The movie is about thanksgiving.
However, Philippe fails at this one point. He fails to offer thanks to what is still higher than him. He fails to acknowledge God.
Once upon a time in first-century Israel, ten virgin young
ladies were excited about attending a wedding. They didn’t know exactly when
the bridegroom was coming, so they had to make adequate preparations for their
waiting time. Five of these young ladies wisely worked diligently to prepare
for any length of time that the bridegroom would delay. Whenever he came, they
would be ready to go into the wedding feast. The other five young ladies foolishly
didn’t work diligently but assumed everything would work itself out.
As the time of absence of the bridegroom lengthened, the
inadequate preparation of the five foolish young ladies became evident. They
were running out of supplies. They asked the five wise young ladies to share
what they had. The five wise young ladies told them that their foolish lack of
preparation put no obligations upon them to give what they had collected in
their wisdom. The foolish five need to go to the market to restock.
A car stitches its way down the highway that needles through the shimmering desert. No one but the inhabitants hears the brakes as it slows. It spits two children out in school uniform. “See you later!”
The
car drives off, accelerating quickly into oblivion.
The
two kids look at each other. The sun begins to suck sweat out of them.
It is very hot in the wilderness today.
I
would like to talk about three different ways of teaching.
The
first is indoctrination. You’ve been told to hate it, but it resembles one part
of true education just like a changeling resembles the baby the fae stole.
Indoctrination drills a single lesson, a single position or idea, into the
student’s head. This is the truth and there is no other.
Indoctrination
creates blind humans. They cannot recognize other perspectives. They don’t even
recognize other perspectives as perspectives. To the indoctrinated man,
all other thoughts are insanity. They, and they alone, know the truth.
The
second is teaching the controversy. As the idea of Darwinism gained bastion
status in public schools, Intelligent Design proponents started a campaign
begging public schools to “teach the controversy,” that is, include I.D.
alongside Darwinism in public schools, teaching both sides as equal options.
This was shot down, of course, but since then I’ve heard the phrase advocated
in different education questions, whenever some controversy about some theory
or knowledge comes along. Teach the controversy, maintain neutrality. Show both
sides, and show that you aren’t biased. All existential and fundamental
questions get answered with a shrug. Who’s to say?
Teaching
the controversy is dropping your kids off in the wilderness, and expecting them
to find their own way to civilization. It’s bad parenting, and it certainly isn’t
education. But like indoctrination, there’s a warped resemblance to true
learning in that heat mirage.
The
third is the journey. All education is a journey from falsity to truth, from
wickedness to wisdom, from the fear of everything or nothing to the fear of the
Lord. Take your students on a journey, and show them how difficult the road to
truth is, but for God’s sake don’t let them walk it alone. It is good for them
to know how hard it is to walk through the wilderness. But show them that taking
them with you through it, not by stranding them there.
One
exercise I do with my class involves taking on the character of an atheist and arguing
the problem of evil. I state it both logically and emotionally, as strongly as
I can. I pull no punches. Then I end the class and tell them to come back
tomorrow with an answer. They spend a few minutes in the wilderness. But the
next day they come back, and after I hear their answers, I give them the
logical and emotional answer to the problem of evil. Not everyone is
able to walk the road, but I take them with me. By the end, they know how
desolate that wilderness is, but they have also come out of the
wilderness to the garden city.
So,
yes, teach the controversy. But also teach the answer to the controversy. They
must come through the welter of conflicting ideas to safety on the other side.
So,
yes, tell them that what you believe is the truth, is the truth. But
show them how you get there, remembering that you too can take wrong turns away
from the well-lit path of the Word.
If
you do teach them the controversy, then your students are not indoctrinated –
they have seen the wilderness. They will know how to recognize the tempter who
lives there. But you must also bring them out again to the city, or they will
be vacant, lost souls, swept clean and ready to be possessed by the
schizophrenia of relativism.
Do
you not wonder why so many children are medicated? Why so many mental issues
and therapists and irrational and insane people? Why has the world gone mad?
Because we weaken our children’s mental
immune system through indoctrination, making it incapable of dealing with a new
idea; or make it comfortable with holding contradictory ideas – a functional
insanity. They either do not know any other city besides the indoctrination
they live in, or, if they do make it to the wilderness of controversy, they
stay there, wandering. If my teacher didn’t even care enough to show me the
answer to the contradiction, does it really matter? They shrug their shoulders
and decide that they should just believe whatever they want to believe, since
smart people disagree and there seems to be no way out of the controversy. If
everything is wilderness, why not call it home?
Let your students get dirt on their boots. But don’t make them walk on their own in the wilderness. From the walls of the city of truth, you can see the slums of indoctrination, and the wilderness of controversy alike – both burning in their own way. Show them how far you have come and they will love the city that you have brought them to – and it is that love of truth that makes them truly educated, that prevents them from letting the city become another slum. Someday your children will issue forth from the city as warriors, and take the city to the wilderness. But that’s a journey for another time.
Carson Spratt is a Rhetoric and Humanities teacher at Logos Online School. He lives in Spokane, Washington, with his wife of seven years, Ellie, without whom life would be inconceivable.
One of the last things I did in my effort not to jump my theological ship rashly was to call on my theologically minded pastor to come convince me I was headed in the wrong direction. I asked if there was a book I could read to persuade me back to the baptist position. I bring this up because the book he gave me used today’s exact argument amongst several others. It argued: Jesus says to “make disciples, and baptize them” so therefore – we cannot baptize babies because they cannot be disciples.
Today I would treat the answer completely differently than I did as a college student. Today I would say – So what? Converted disciples have baby disciples. I believe the point is made easily this way:
God was automatically the God of children born to believers: I will be God to you and to your descendants after you, (Gen 17); the promise is for you and your children (Acts 2).
This covenant was possible in tangible reality, not just in wishful thinking, because God normatively extends the gift of faith to the infants of the church: You made me trust you at my mother’s breasts…and from my mother’s womb you have been my God, (Ps 22).
The nascent faith of babies grows into the intellectual faith of toddlers: This is why we are commanded to teach diligently to our children that “Yhwh is OUR God…” and that “You shall love Yhwh YOUR God with all your heart…” (Dt 6).
It said to teach them what is already true about them. Not teach them until they convert. But teach them that God has been their God, and let them sing it out – first as joyful noise in church (Ps 8), and later as a confession about God’s sovereign gift to a baby (Ps 71 and 22).
I had throughout my young Christian years remarked that there was no conversion into God’s religion for children born into the covenant in the Old Testament:
My primary concern is whether our worship is preparing for a muscular Christendom. My argument is that saying “no” to government overreach requires heavy lifting, and not many people are willing to do that. They’d be comfortable doing whatever uncomfortable yoga poses the guba’ment demands. “Warrior poses on left foot,” please!” “Absolutely, as long as my right foot can remain where it is. This little series of contorted positions eventually leads to directions the body is not meant to go.
Little by little the ability to say, “no” is fleshed out of you one arduous pose at a time. So, if you want to say “no” as a way of life to the many and boost-erous amount of demands from the state, then you need to lift up holy hands and kneel and sing out. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit precisely because it is a training ground for the weightiness of God to abide in you. Therefore, you must say “no” with consistency.
You can’t collapse under the weight of statist imperatives, but you will if all you do is participate in the spontaneity of evangelical masses with floppy hands in the air one chorus at a time. When Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” I think he meant every part of that phrase in English and Greek. Work this whole liturgical thing first so that your muscles are ready for war when war cometh. Weak worship produces unsteady hands (Ps. 144:1).
If men think they can opine on social media against these efforts without the efforts of worship, it is in vain. They must respond to the rhetoric of the left with the worship of heaven. They need to take the weekly task as preparation for the Sunday duty. When this becomes common parlance in the home, then saying “no” to bureaucrats is as easy as spreading gee butter on freshly-baked sourdough bread.
~~~ I mentioned in my sermon yesterday that Christians too often live in the glory of the past and therefore wish to repeat slogans of the past as a mode of operation. This can be a clear case of nostalgia or a clear case of laziness. Unlike whatever those Q-Anon imbeciles believe, Reagan is not coming back from the grave, and neither is J.F.K.’s brother.
It is much easier to repeat slogans than to refresh slogans to apply to our current societal decay. The latter takes hard work and muscle-building rituals, whereas the first requires only a handy textbook and memorization techniques.
Christians need to move forward and seek the glory of God in our regular exercise of killing sin lest sin kills us. It begins now by shutting off those stupid apps that consume our day; by giving your son a hug; by encouraging our wives in their domestic labors; by opening the Bible and our homes to others; by doing the hard work of worship when the world around us thinks it’s non-sensical.
You want to build your liturgical muscles, then fight it out in the private square and then watch the public square bow before Christendom like Caesar did to Messiah Jesus and how Biden will one day to the Ascended Lord of glory.
This is an issue I care deeply about in our oversexualized age. Children are being exposed earlier and earlier to sex through various technological means and they are exploring their sexuality through initiatory rituals as early as 13 years of age. While these exposures and practices deaden the soul and endanger the maturation of the mind, there is still a far deeper monster out there called sexual abuse. The recent Larry Nassar scandal is an indication that our society is attempting to grasp this issue but lacks the categories to deal with such barbarism. And while many of these events can be deeply politicized (Kavanaugh case), the Church must offer a proper response to this turmoil. We can say that the ministry of Jesus was a kingdom ministry to children. Our Lord desired their protection and even threatened with death those who would dare endanger or keep the children from being blessed by him.
In this episode, Pastor Uri Brito sits down with Dr. Justin Holcomb. The Holcombs have published two children’s books to help children understand their bodies. Indeed, it’s not just academicians that need to develop a theology of the body, but children as well. I encourage parents to seek these out and begin the conversation earlier with our little ones about their image-bearing status and the significance and uniqueness of the body God gave them.
The wisdom that Solomon desires for his son is the wisdom
that works. Wisdom worked from the beginning creating and ordering the world
(Pr 3.19-20; 8.22-31). As the image of Wisdom, man is a worker, creating,
ordering, and bringing productivity within the creation over which God set him
to rule. We are world-makers, beginning with ordering the plot of creation that
is uniquely ours–our own persons–and extending that dominion to wherever God
grants us responsibility and authority.
God has created and commanded us to work. As Solomon’s son
is moving into his maturity, the kingly stage of his life, Solomon is concerned
that he understands his responsibilities as a worker and the tempting threats
he will face as he fights the post-fall creation. Sin not only made the
creation outside of man resistant to his dominion activity, but sin has also twisted
man as a worker. We fight the curse of sin without and within.
Welcome back, my friends! When we last talked, we had outlined a list of arguments I personally used to use against infant baptism [LINK TO PREVIOUS]. As I had begun to question the possibility that infant baptism was correct, I had to address these exact items. These are not straw men. These are the kind of arguments that intelligent and godly men do employ. I am writing about them because I changed my mind about them after vigorously using them for a long time.
So I am not insulting you if you have said the same; I am not mocking you if you don’t agree with me. What I will say for my infant baptism view is that the doctrines of including children in the covenant have brought me endless joy since I came to see each one of these doctrines as true, convinced by scripture. This is why I hope to share such joy with others.
So today’s goal is to address the concept of baptism as full immersion:
My first memory of being taught an argument against infant baptism was an argument against sprinkling and pouring. It went like this: The Greek term for baptism, the word we get “baptism” from, is baptizo. Baptizo means “total immersion under water” and therefore sprinkling and pouring are NOT baptism because they are not full immersion. Furthermore, we are said to be buried with Christ in baptism, and only immersion pictures this – not sprinkling, and not pouring. Since baptism is by immersion only, infant baptism is false. That is the argument.
This counter-argument is fairly simple, and thankfully is unsophisticated:
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
